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Has the industry reduced costs?
The EMC3D semiconductor equipment and individual unit processes that per unit. He commented: "Improved
materials consortium has extended its could be implemented easily synchronization between the unit
agreement in order to improve the industry into a volume production processes along with aggressive
further. Improvements in the compound environment and to enable a cost saving designs have been
semiconductor industry have been vital in low overall cost of very successful at exceeding the
reducing costs, it has been claimed. ownership (CoO) for 3D consortium's original cost goals."
chip stacking.
From an original closing date of October Equipment efficiency, reduced
2009, the members of the international Initial CoO targets were of material expenses and simplified
EMC3D semiconductor equipment and $200 (£122) per wafer, but process flow have all been vital in
materials consortium have now extended EMC3D project director Paul Siblerud lowering costs, Mr Siblerud concluded.The
their agreement to July 2011.Originally, the noted that now fabs running iTSV can group EMC3D was originally established in
aims of the group were to commercialise produce 3D-TSV devices at less than $150 September 2006.
A LIFT for fibre lasers
LIFT - Leadership In Fibre Laser Technology, leading position for Europe in the science,
is a collaborative, large-scale integrated application and production technologies of
project funded by the NMP Directorate in fibre lasers.
the 7th Framework Programme of the
European Commission. European industry The consortium will develop innovative laser
today leads in industrial laser processing. sources with intelligent beam delivery
Continuous innovation and adoption of systems and dynamic beam manipulation, in
novel technologies are required to maintain continuous-wave, nanosecond pulsed, and
this position. Fibre lasers represent only ultra-short pulsed femtosecond laser
10% of an estimated market volume of 2 sources, operating at power levels ranging
billion Euros worldwide for industrial lasers. into the kilowatt regime. LIFT will enable a
The market share of fibre lasers is expected greater market share for existing
to double by 2010 and double again by applications, create new application areas solar cell fabrication and cold ablation for
2013, when fibre lasers will account for for manufacturing, and build a European ceramics manufacturing.
more than 30% of all industrial lasers. network of components’ suppliers and laser
system manufacturers. The results will bring radical advances in
In order for Europe to advance its position four important application areas:
as technology and manufacturing leader in Demonstrations will show the potential of ring6 Laser Materials Processing
industrial laser processing, it is imperative this technology in domains where there are ring6 Health Care Delivery
for European manufacturers to take the large existing markets such as high-speed ring6 Cost-Effective Manufacturing of Solar
Leadership In Fibre laser Technologies. That remote cutting and welding, medical Cells for Renewable Energy
is exactly the goal of the LIFT project. diagnostics and treatment, TFT patterning or ring6 Manufacturing of the next-generation of
This project will establish an internationally where there are potential markets such as ICs with nanometre feature size.
Nanoscale semiconductors could get support from DNA
A team of researchers have developed a Researchers have been trying for a number Si-ping Han, a theorist in materials science
solution to address the industry challenge of years to arrange single-wall carbon who is currently researching the
of organising carbon nanotubes into nanotubes with diameters of less than two interactions between carbon nanotubes
nanoscale electronic circuits which contain nanometres into desirable geometric and DNA at Caltech.
semiconductors. The researchers at the patterns. Single-wall carbon nanotubes are
California Institute of Technology (Caltech) effective semiconductors . Researchers at Rice University discovered
hoped that DNA origami could be used as in 2003 that large numbers of pure carbon
100 square nanometre construction bases "DNA is the perfect molecule for nanotube fibres could be dissolved in
for prototyping electronic circuits with recognising other strands of DNA and strong acidic solvents, a method which can
semiconductors because of DNA's ability single-stranded DNA also just happens to help the materials become processed on
for self-assembly. like sticking to carbon nanotubes," said an industrial scale.
November / December 2009 www.compoundsemiconductor.net 7
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